I’m thinking about retirement twofold. First, there’s putting on my PJs and snoozing my night away. Definitely a worthwhile endeavor.

Then there’s the real retirement. The one where I don’t have to work anymore and I use Medicare and I live as frugally as I can off Social Security. Or maybe I get two, three bucks in the bank enough to eat gruel and thrill to the sounds of the oldies.

Yeah, that’s the retirement that keeps me dreaming.

Alternatively, I want all offices everywhere in America, all of the world, every fucking corner to get a special “fuck you” policy. It’s a magic idea. Simple. Easy to execute. No downside, just catharsis.

Here’s the plan. Every six months say, each employee in an office cubicle, maybe a few offices, but mainly the cubicle rats, they get a free, as in pain free, penalty free, giant FUCK YOU. You just get to tell someone who pisses you off enough, that one simple phrase.

But you only get the two a year, so you gotta fucking conserve. Gotta bide your time, wait to execute. When the moment comes, though, it’s poetry. It’s brevity. It’s the soul of wit and it’s fucking work hell salvation.

Today, I would have invoked mine. I actually probably could have done it, probably could have gotten away with it, escaped unscathed. Could have said my fuck you, and no one would have been the wiser, given the hearer was mobile.

It didn’t roll off the old tongue, though. Instead, I went the route of karma and kept it all civil.

But, if only the world would think of my plan. Fuck you and move on.

My two favorites from the weekend. A weekend in which apart from juggling, a lot of eating and some walking, I did nothing. (Click on any of the photos to get to the whole gallery.)

I also learned lizards have some more intense coloring than I had thought.

A while back, as in 25 fucking years ago–Jesus christ, it really was that long–I was in college. I headed to Syracuse, NY in January, a semester after all the other kids, and in the cold, dead middle of winter.

Starting late and it being to fucking cold too barely move, let alone socialize, meant my first semester grades were fairly phenomenal, since studying was my only activity. But the life of a grind was not my highest quest, so I tried to figure out something I could do to kill the boredom.

Back then, there was no Internet to make fake friends on, sadly.

Backtracking a bit, the semester before I started my actual first semester of college I worked in a warehouse, packing school supplies. I missed the normal September start because of a late check to accept my place in class, and because it certainly didn’t hurt for me to have some dough in my pocket to live and shit.

Now, packing school supplies probably sounds like a beachwagon full of fun and games, especially the “mother shift” of bitter ladies working the only job they could find to make ends meet for their families. Yeah, fun with a capital F. True is, though, it had its down times.

To quell the boredom, I taught myself to juggle and then spent months juggling various school supplies in my little, dirty workstation. (One that I would have for several subsequent summers, as I worked my way through college and made some friends I still have.)

In 1982, bored with my own company, fucking cold to the bone in a miserable winter, I headed to Syracuse U.’s “Women’s Building” and started hanging out with the Juggling Club. Founded just a bit before I started by a local dude with a professor father and NASA aspirations, Paul Norton, it still exists. And, somewhere on that linked website, there’s an old, old, old picture of yours truly.

Today, I timewarped back to those days. I showed up to check out the juggling club that convenes every Saturday at the Klutz Store in Palo Alto.

There’s something comforting about a patio full of nerdly men with a variety of facial hair arrangements, the inevitable juggling core, and their colorful toys. For myself, I picked up a few of these.

I’m pretty sure I’ll be back, if only to work on the back fat oozing out beyond the elastic of my bra.

I haven’t been going to shows. I haven’t been doing shows. But, I have been doing some of the writing I am trying to do.

You can’t always turn off the part of the brain that looks for fun, fun, fun. I can’t just lay completely low.

So, with a couple other of chicks at work, we organized an after work happy hour. In and of itself an unremarkable event. Where I work, in the land of wonks and intellectuals and committed, earnest Californians and transplants, though, it was notable. They just ain’t natural partiers. Natural studiers, I’d say.

How do you hook the kids from study hall into going out for a post-work pop? Comedy, of course. A little group email with a chunk of satire, mimicking just the kind of emails and the jargon we all sup on, metaphorically, each and every day.

I’d add it here if I wasn’t scared of mixing work and my personal interwebs, and I though anyone reading this shit would get it.

Maybe a culture shift of more socializing. Or maybe a blip on the usually pretty staid collective radar screen. Time will tell.

Biggest thrill of all — I think the lords of karma rolling the universe around were particularly kind. The power went out about an hour maybe 45 minutes before go time in the building. Our computers were on an emergency generator, and thanks to shitloads of glass there was ambient light, but the mood shifted from work.

Without A/C there was really no reason to not got sit on an outside patio with a fruity drink.

I meant to write about the military’s research into a “gay bomb.” But, really, what the fuck can you say?

I want to write about a couple of work things, but, yeah, once bitten, twice shy, fill in your favorite cliches and lyrics. I will say one thing, however, read an awesome resume the other day. Person indicated they had “top notch communicational skills.”

I looked it up. Turns out “communicational” is a word, but fucking A, should it be? Is it necessary? Fucking awkward, every sentence I found on the interwebs.

Lastly, I’ve been dressing a bit different for me. Seems to be closer to the locals. Not sure what’s happening to me.

The think is, it’s a whole San Francisco thing. Pants with a dress. Dress and pants together. If you’ve ever frozen your sweet ass off in SF’s cold, it makes sense. But, fucking hell, what am I becoming?

(Worse yet, the boss and a co-worker were sporting similar looks today. Fucking uniform.)

(Worser yet, my dress was new and blue. Later the same day, my armpits were blue. Hot, hot, hot. Not.)

We bought one of those shitty throw away cameras, when I was too much of a dumb shit to have remembered my real one.

McAfee Coliseum before sundown.

More importantly, here’s M. in the stands being entertained after eating tasty Coliseum food.

More pictures are here, Baseball, June 04, 2007.

Unrelatedly, randomly and amusingly, this picture just showed up on the CD we got from Walgreen’s with the developing of the pictures. Not sure if it’s from the roll, somewhere embedded by FujiFilm, or a bonus Walgreen’s tosses to you.

Hello, stranger girl of unknown origin.

With the whole gambling ruckus down below, M. was saying something like, you know, it’s a religious school and his kids probably go there and so he’s worried about gamblling.

I kept laughing about his insistence on “religious” equaling no gambling. I mean damn, I have never met a Catholic would minded a little gambling (or drinking or dancing or card playing). Ever hear of Bingo Night? So I Google’d the an authoritative answer.

As I suspected, as long as you ain’t slipping on a condom it’s all fun.

M. went out for a ride today.

Much later we went for a walk back to the local Catholic school carnival. Loves me a carnival. Whee!

Controversy erupted. Just when we were enjoying the home-towned-ness, this dude got into a shouting match with someone running the show. We caught, “This is bullshit. There’s gambling. I know my rights…” Something like that. He then wandered around wielding his cell phone camera as a righteous tool of documentation.

The guys circling him tailed behind his document in a line.

We gathered he was upset, because this fundraising carnival for the school’s building fund was featuring gambling in the form of this “Pan 2” game. The deal was that you could throw down 10 cents to 2 bucks on colored squares, then a ball would randomly roll onto the colors and you’d win on a color match with various odds and payoffs. I think the guy’s chain got yanked, because teenage boys and girls circled the booth tossing their money down.

Afterall, right next store there was a thing called “Cherry Bells” that I ain’t never heard of with something like a scratch ticket, where you pull out some prize winning tabs. Prominently, that booth said you had to be all growed up and past 18 years to buy something like this here for 50 cents.

He was ranting about gambling and church and his school and his kids.

So, they wrestled him on out of there, of course.

And, Mayberry RFD, where we now live, had itself a little bit of excitement. (You know you be living in a small town, when you head out to such a carnival as we did last night, and the peace officer who took your stolen bike complaint a couple months before recognizes you and says, “Hey” and shoots the shit.)

Keep it moving.

So far, the weekend’s highlight was wonderful but at such a low scale, I have to wonder about my low expectations.

Last night on the way to dinner, M. stopped to pick up a new pair of glasses from the crappiest Lens Crafters in town. Clearly not an establishment that thrives on service.

I was mildly irked, because I was hungry. And because M. can fade into completely unwarranted, irrational impatience when he’s looking for dinner, and I have an errand to run. My fantasy relationship involves no irritation whilst the other guy farts around. Or more specifically, a huge fucking swath of leeway if I’m not ready yet.

So, when I have to wait for him, I dramatically like to up the stakes of injustice in the relationship. Who wouldn’t want to live with me?

Anyway, to right the perceived wrong with a little quid pro quo after moving our dinner reservations back a half hour, I decided I needed moisturizer. I couldn’t live another second without some attempt to moisten the flaky ankles I had discovered while waiting for the Lens Crafters staff to deign provide service.

I decided to look in the back of the Staples next door. After all, what doesn’t an office supply superstore say other than moisture and beauty products?

In the back with the bulk liquid soap for office toilets, I found joy. Not just moisturizer but Aveeno, which suits my sensitive, baby-like, allergic self.

I was already thrilled to the core of my being with the mere prospect of buying my bottle of moist. I was shivering and gladly willing to fork over as much as $7 for the feeling of smooth, youthful skin. (I’d pay even more to actually feel smooth, youthful skin, if you know what I mean.)

The lottery win, the cherry on my sundae, the denouement, the thrill, the orgasm was yet to be, though. Nope, that came at the cash register when the smiling young man scanned by elixir bottle and remarked himself at the price, expressing envy.

It was 50 cents plus tax for a grand total of $0.54. How fucking awesome is that? And, how fucking sad am I for wallowing for 24 hours in that ecstacy?